The Lost Girls || Bbangsaz

III

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     "No." I took a full step back. "I can't."

      I had a lot of resentment toward Elton. I hated what he'd done to me without giving me all the facts, I hated who he'd been the last few years we were together, and I hated the way he'd left me, but that didn't mean I wanted to kill him. We'd been in love at one point. That had to matter on some level.

     "There isn't another way," Danielle said. "If we don't kill him, we'll never be free from this binding; our deaths will forever be entwined. Not to mention the girls whose lives will be cut short before they know what they're really getting into."

     "We cut lives short regularly." Even as the words tumbled out of my mouth, I knew it wouldn't be the same. Once he turned the next girl, she'd inevitably be on her own without a clue. The quick deaths we offered our meals were a kindness in comparison.

     "If he turns the next girl, we'd have to wait decades to attempt this again, and if she doesn't—" Haerin stopped, took a deep breath.

     "Every time he turns someone new, it limits our chances. We could end up being bound forever."

     "Why?" I asked.

     "We don't want to get into that until we're sure, but we're working on it," Danielle said.
"But we do know that everyone he's turned has to be involved."

     "Can't we set up an arrangement with him? Like, share custody of our time?" If someone came to me and presented the option of either living in a less-than-desirable city for six months out of the year or certain death, I'm fairly sure I'd make any location work.

     "It's not just about where we live." She stood and paced the length of the living room. "You're still young enough that you're thinking short-term. I've seen a full century pass, and I'll see another one soon enough. What do you think will happen when there are twenty of us? Fifty? All living within the same city limits?"

     I couldn't fathom next week, let alone centuries from now. If there were fifty of us in a city, even twenty, we'd be in over our heads.

     Too many bodies would begin to disappear. Vampires weren't made for large packs. Occasionally we had small covens, but that was more for companionship than anything else.

     "What Elton is doing is unnatural for our kind," Danielle said. "Vampires rarely turn more than one, if that. There's so much risk in having that many vampires tied to one maker, and he's not taking it seriously. It concerns us."

     A chill crept over my already cold skin.

     Memories of Hyein bleeding out on the concrete beneath the Dairy Queen sign flooded my mind. The night I made my best friend into a demon, and she never forgave me. It had been a painful process, like tearing the very fiber that stitched me together to give her a piece of myself. I wiped my damp palms on my pants. I had no desire to repeat the process ever again, and I had no idea how Elton had done it three times over.

     "If he's come to enjoy the pain of ripping one's self apart to give life to another, we're worried hell increase the frequency of his turnover, so to speak," Haerin said.

     "I understand what you're saying." I really did. I still couldn't wrap my mind around killing Elton. Maybe I was being sentimental for who he used to be, or maybe because I'd been frozen in time at sixteen, I'd always carry those old feelings with me, but there had to be another way.

     "Have either of you tried to talk to him recently?"

     "We talked to him last week," Haerin said.